The Magic School Bus/Characters

Characters that appeared in The Magic School Bus.

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Main Characters

Ms. Valerie Frizzle: The teacher of the third grade class.

• Adult Child
• Casual Danger Dialog - So often that the kids pick it up after a while.
• Catch Phrase - "Seatbelts, everyone!"
  • "Take chances! Make mistakes! Get messy!"
  • "WAHOO!"
  • "To the bus!"
• Cloudcuckoolander - Not in a ditzy way, but she is strange. (In a good way!)
• Crazy Prepared - She doesn't need anything but the bus, really.
• Cool Teacher - She can make any scientific subject interesting. To anyone.
• Character Tics - Do her flashing earrings count?
• Expressive Shirt - Her dress, which is usually a plain purple one, has pictures that are always related to the episode's subject. Arnold even notices this pattern after they had a field trip in his Digestive System.
• Fiery Redhead - In the most innocent way possible.
• Flat Character - There's really not much to her. There doesn't need to be.
• Inexplicably Awesome - She is a Crazy Awesome Weirdness Magnet. Also, was once the Trope Namer. She still is the trope picture though.
• In-Series Nickname - "The Friz".
• Large Ham
• The Mentor
• Older Than She Looks - Implied to be this.
• Team Mom: Well, she is the only adult.
• Quirky Curls
• Static Character - Whatever seemingly affects her in one episode/book never carries over.
• Unlimited Wardrobe - She has a different dress and earring set matching the theme of the next field trip.

Arnold Perlstein

• Badass Adorable - He certainly has his mooments of outstanding bravery.
• Betty and Veronica - In Fanon, Wanda and Phoebe being Arnold's Veronica and Betty is common
• Beware the Nice Ones - Don't get him pissed. He becomes a Determinator.
• Big Eater - He's been shown through numerous stories to snack a lot.
• Birds of a Feather - Hinted at with Phoebe.
• Butt Monkey - His misfortunes are played for laughs an awful lot.
• Catch Phrase - "I knew I should've stayed home today."
• Cute Shotaro Boy
• The Drag Along - Never once completely enthusiastic about a field trip.
• Honor Before Reason - Most memorably in the erosion and dinosaur episodes.
• I Just Want to Be Normal - More on the lines of "I Just Want a Normal Science Class."
• Informed Judaism - A nearly throwaway reference in the Christmas Special.
• Lovable Coward
• Only Sane Man - It may be presented as cowardice, but, really, he is more than justified in being completely and utterly scared stiff of the sort of thing that happens on the average class trip.
• Opposites Attract - Hinted at with Wanda.
• Quirky Curls
• Redheaded Hero: In "The Busasaurus." He also could qualify as the main character, given that he has the most development out of the rest of the cast.
• The So-Called Coward - Push comes to shove, he's the most reliable of the kids.

Wanda Li

• Catch Phrase - "Come on, you bunch of weaselly wimps!" and "What are we gonna do, what are we gonna do, what are we gonna dooooo?!"
• Character Tics - That little "tsk"-like sound she makes when she's annoyed.
• Genki Girl - Usually very.
• Jerkass - Sometimes falls into this. Played up for An Aesop in the coral reef episode.
• Nobody Calls Me Chicken - After all...
• One of the Boys - Enjoys sports, like Ralphie, and surfing with Ralphie and Carlos
• Opposites Attract - Hinted at with Arnold.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Tomboy to Phoebe's Girly Girl.
• Tsundere - Of the tsuntsun flavor.

Carlos Ramon

• Class Clown
• Deadpan Snarker: Though Incredibly Flamboyant and Hammy Snarker is a better fit. Nothing deadpan about Carlos.
• Incredibly Lame Pun: What most of his jokes are.
• Opposites Attract: Hinted at with Dorothy Ann. Fanon says they get together.
• Phrase Catcher: "Carlooooooss!"
• Pungeon Master
• Tough Room
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes? - Only it's spiders for him.

Phoebe Terese

• Catch Phrase - "At my old school..."
• The Chick - Not the only girl, not in a Five-Man Band, but definitely fits otherwise. Also The Heart.
• Daddy's Girl - Implied in "Going Batty"
• Friend to All Living Things - Very much so.
  • Friend to Bugs: Yes, even them. Of course, that's to be expected being that this is a science-themed show aimed at children...
• Girl Next Door
• Hair Decorations - Her yellow headband.
• Naive Everygirl - Associated with the above.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Girly Girl to Wanda's Tomboy

Tim Jamal

• Catch Phrase - "We've been frizzled."
• The Generic Guy - More noticeable than any of other characters, to the point where there are probably greater depths to recurring characters than him.
• The Quiet One
• Sequential Artist - Tim is noted to be a good artist. In one episode, he says he's always wanted to do a comic book.
• Straight Man

Dorothy Ann

• Bookworm - Of course.
  • Cute Bookworm
• Captain Obvious: Much of her research. "According to my research, after chewing comes swallowing!". Oh, really?
• Catch Phrase - "According to my research..."
• Dumb Blonde - Averted big time.
• Girlish Pigtails
• Hair of Gold
• Hollywood Nerd - She's constantly reading books, and apparently she can perform planetary and astronomical body trajectory calculations. In the third grade.
• In-Series Nickname - Usually called by her initials.
• Magic Skirt - Dorothy Ann always wears a pleated miniskirt which stays down no matter what.
  • Or not. In season 1, episode 12 "Gets Ants in its Pants", Dorothy Ann gets a very brief Panty Shot when she jumps into a hole. She has another in episode 41 "Cracks A Yolk" when a gust of wind blows her skirt upwards, revealing her white panties.
• Opposites Attract: Hinted at with Carlos. Fanon says they get together.

Ralphie Tennelli

• Agent Mulder
• Big Eater
• Brought to You by The Letter "S"
• Catch Phrase - "Is it just me, or..."
• Gadgeteer Genius - Once made a fully functional robotic helper out of junk parts.
• Lovable Jock
• Nice Hat: It wouldn't be Ralphie without that red backwards baseball cap.

Keesha Franklin

• Agent Scully - Keesha is always skeptical of anything unscientific
• Arbitrary Skepticism - ...except a bus that can transform, shrink, etc.
  • Well, she is one of Ms. Frizzle's students. She sees the bus do things like that on a regular basis.
• Catch Phrase - "Oh bad oh bad oh bad bad bad bad..."
  • Related to the above trope: "Let's get the facts..."
• Sassy Black Girl: Not quite sassy, per say, but she is the most skeptical and sarcastic member of the class.

Liz

• Face Heel Turn: Briefly. Liz allies herself with Janet in "Butterfly and the Bog Beast", mainly so Janet will have a sounding board while the class is shrunk down.
• Genius Animal
• Non-Human Sidekick
• The Speechless: She is Suddenly Voiced in some of the computer games, but she can't talk in the TV show.

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Supporting Characters

The Bus

• Magic Bus
• Transforming Mecha - Well, bus, anyway.

Janet

• Aesop Amnesia - She learns to not be such a horrible person in nearly every single episode she appears in, but it never sticks.
• Evil Redhead - If you think Janet's orange hair makes her a ginger (which this troper does), she's definitely the evil of the gingers on the show.
• Insufferable Genius: Her initial characterization, but the "insufferable" half was given more focus in later episodes.
• Jerkass - Ranging from Jerk with a Heart of Gold to near sadism, as the plot calls for it.
• Manipulative Bitch
• Pet the Dog: Sometimes, as to subdue her tendancies.
• The Sociopath - Could go along with Jerkass, but Janet has shown her sociopathic tendencies, ranging from her obsession with feeding butterflies to a "bog beast," her constant irritability, annoyance, impatience, and aggression towards the class (most often Phoebe), her obvious irritation with being bored ("Gets A Bright Idea"), and that she seems to have no problem with lying or cheating ("Makes A Stink"). The only person she seems to have some empathy for is Arnold, but even then, she has no problem manipulating him as long as she gets what she wants.

Mikey Ramon

• Rescued From the Scrappy Heap - In universe example: the kids all complain about him when Carlos suggests calling him in the energy episode, and cheer him when he solves their problem.
• Genius Cripple - This is a kid capable of programming tasks on an 1990s computer.

Mr. Ruhle

• Catch Phrase - "Thought you could fool old Ruhle, eh?"

The Producers

• Meta Guys